


Pay It Forward

by newdog14



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Maribat - Fandom, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Mari and Tim are coffee addicts and their friends are concerned, MariBat, Maribat March, No Angst, So are the baristas, Timari - Freeform, We interrupt your regularly scheduled angst, With a Coffee Shop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 13:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30039660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newdog14/pseuds/newdog14
Summary: Marinette could admit that she maybe had a bit of a coffee problem. She wouldn’t admit it out loud, where Tikki could hear it and try to hold an intervention (again), but in the privacy of her own mind Marinette could be honest with herself. But it's not like she's the only person in the world to have a not so minor caffeine dependency, right?For Maribat March Day 14: Death
Relationships: Tim Drake/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 8
Kudos: 157
Collections: Maribat March





	Pay It Forward

Marinette could admit that she maybe had a bit of a coffee problem. She wouldn’t admit it  _ out loud _ , where Tikki could hear it and try to hold an intervention (again), but in the privacy of her own mind Marinette could be honest with herself. She had long since passed the point of being able to function without coffee, she was pretty sure it had stunted her growth, and whenever she went too long without it she was pretty sure she actually started to exhibit some minor withdrawal symptoms. 

So, she had a coffee problem, but in her defense, it was by necessity more than choice. Growing up fighting Hawkmoth at any random time of day while simultaneously having to go to school and also starting to launch her fashion career at the same time had played merry havoc with her sleep schedule, and if not for coffee she never could have survived her teenage years. By the end of it all, taking down Agreste had come with a side of sweet, sweet revenge, and the first thing she’d done afterwards was take a well deserved nap.

But that had been years ago, and while that had certainly  _ started _ her caffeine addiction, it wasn’t responsible for prolonging it. As it turned out, being the Grand Guardian wasn’t  _ just _ about hiding the Miraculous from those who would abuse their power, and she had a lot of catching up to do from the years that she and Fu had been stuck in Paris battling Hawkmoth. Not to mention all the studying and translating she had to get done, since her Guardian training had ended rather abruptly after Fu was compromised and had to pass on the mantle. 

Stupid Hawkmoth.

After graduating Marinette had set out to travel the world and fix imbalances wherever she found them. She’d started touring with Jagged Stone, making his costumes by day and slipping out to heal the world at night. She didn’t get a lot of sleep, but it was fun, and it grew her brand, and it gave her the mobility she needed to inconspicuously travel the world. But then they’d gone to America, and she’d found Gotham City, which was covered by a swirling miasma of destruction and dark energy so strong it had nearly made her sick when they’d first arrived.

It wasn’t the sort of imbalance she could fix over the course of a few days. Hell, once she really got a look at it all she realized it would probably take her  _ years _ to fix it all. She was pretty sure certain parts of the city had been  _ designed _ to create dark energy, though she couldn’t tell if that was on purpose or just an unintended consequence of the city’s weird obsession with gothic architecture. Either way, it was her job to figure out how to fix it, so she bid adieu to Jagged and Penny and moved to Gotham permanently. 

It was an exhausting place to live, really. Even if she wasn’t trying to cleanse a city that had been stewing in darkness for decades it would  _ still  _ be an exhausting place to live. No matter where she went, or what she did, something bad happened. Sometimes it was just a mugger, or a kidnapper, or a pickpocket, and Marinette could deal with them relatively easily. But other times it was a rogue attack, or a turf war, or robbery turned hostage situation, and in those cases all she could do was duck and hope that the Bats got there in time to save everyone. 

Gotham was insane and chaotic and Marinette didn’t understand how  _ anyone _ could live there without a steady supply of coffee to get them through the day. The one time she’d been in an attack without getting coffee first, when Condiment King had attacked the coffeeshop she was in before she’d gotten her drink, Marinette had panicked and broken his arm. She hadn’t gotten in trouble or anything, but she started seeing vigilantes a lot more after that, and she was pretty sure that Batman had put her on some kind of watch list. 

She wasn’t sure  _ what  _ exactly she was being watched for, nor could she  _ prove _ that the increase in sightings of caped crusaders was because they were watching  _ her _ , but regardless they were making it difficult to work her cleansing magic without being caught. It was very frustrating, and it was slowing down the already slow process of healing Gotham. 

On the bright side, the coffee shop she’d saved had named a drink after her, and “The Coffee Queen’s Death Brew” was introduced as their October special, which was cool. Mostly because it was easier to order the drink by a name, instead of an explanation of how to put as much caffeine as possible into one beverage. She wasn’t sure how popular her so-called Death Brew was with the general populace, but she knew that there was at least one other regular who drank it, according to the barista.

It was information delivered with a tone of absolute horror and mild concern, and Marinette is pretty sure the guy only shared it in a bid to try and get Marinette to  _ stop _ drinking the ‘over caffeinated swill’ (his words), but that was a lost cause. However, Marinette was well aware that the name Death Brew wasn’t entirely undeserved, and if someone else was regularly getting her go-to caffeine shot, well, she could only assume that they were just as overworked and exhausted as she was.

So instead of switching her order to a decaf tea, Marinette decided to try and brighten this stranger’s day by paying for their drink in advance. She figured they were probably a college student or another freelancer, and since both of those groups of people tended to be pretty broke she figured it would be an appreciated gesture.

But then the next day she came in, she was told that her own Death Brew had been paid for, as well as a chocolate chip cookie. It was almost sweet, except that she’d just been one-upped, and that was basically a challenge to her sleep deprived brain, and Marinette was never one to turn down a challenge. So she bought their next drink again, as well as a muffin of their choosing.

Things only kept escalating from there, of course. At first only via the pastries they left for each other, but by the third week of October the mysterious regular and Marinette were buying multiple cups of Death Brew for each other at a time. The baristas were horrified. Tikki was horrified. A friend of her companion in caffeine dependency was horrified, and had apparently attempted to bribe the baristas into ending the pay-it-forward war that had broken out. Marinette ended that attempt by dropping a twenty into the tip jar, which somehow led to tipping being included in the war of one-upmanship. 

It was silly, she supposed, but it was also fun, and picking up whatever had been ordered for her became the highlight of her morning. October ending snuck up on her, which meant that when she came in on November first to the news that the Death Brew had been retired she was rather blindsided. It didn’t matter too much to  _ her _ , as she knew exactly how to order the drink regardless, but she did wonder how her compatriot would fare. Perhaps she would finally win?

Her answer came the next morning, when instead of the usual prepaid order she was greeted by a very handsome man who looked about her age, with eye bags that rivalled her own, and the words, “You’re the Coffee Queen, right?”

Marinette blinked, because it was early and she hadn’t had her Death Brew yet (she was going to call it that forever, wasn’t she?), and despite the name of the drink no one had  _ actually _ referred to her as the Coffee Queen, so far as she knew. Unless the baristas had been calling her that behind her back, which...was entirely too probable, actually. But this man wasn’t a barista, at least not one she’d ever seen, and he was on the customers’ side of the counter, so why would he call her that? Unless… “You’re the regular who drinks my Death Brew?”

He grinned at her, and even with the clear exhaustion his smile was absolutely charming, and she couldn’t help but return it. “Yeah. I’m Tim.”

“Marinette,” she said, holding out her hand to shake. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” Tim answered. “So, I was going to buy your coffee again, but was told that the Death Brew had been retired, and I think my brother paid the staff not to tell me how to order it myself, so I came to ask you in person if you’d teach me, and also if you’d want to actually, properly get coffee with me?”

“I’d like that a lot,” Marinette said, feeling just a bit giddy.

Marinette could admit that she maybe had a bit of a coffee problem. But so did Tim, and it was a problem that had helped bring them together, and therefore, was it really even a problem at all? 

(Yes. Yes, it definitely was. But they’d never admit that out loud, where Dick could hear it and try to hold an intervention, again.)


End file.
